At 20 years old, Jody Groundwater is fast becoming one of Scotland’s most exciting badminton prospects. Already having one Island Games bronze medal to her name, Orkney's first ever badminton medal, Jody is excited to see what else she can achieve on the court.
The pride of representing their island, is something that very few people have an opportunity to experience, and for Jody, that came at the 2025 Orkney Island Games. At the Games, Jody performed extremely well, competing in the Women’s Doubles competition, where she was partnered by Rebecca Reid, delivering several fantastic performances including a great victory over Shetland’s Chloe Hitchin and Shona Mackay in the quarter-finals, which would win them a bronze medal.
“I love representing Orkney, I’ve said it before, just pulling on an Orkney t-shirt, and playing for the island is amazing. It is just a different team spirit when playing for Orkney because everyone is supporting you.” Jody said.
Having already tasted success in badminton, Jody has her mind fixed on her goals, she said: “I would love to represent Scotland some day in the Commonwealth Games.”
“I would love to get another medal in the Island Games, and to be ranked within the top five in Scotland would be ideal.”
To help Jody achieve these goals, she has been receiving support from sportscotland’s Athlete travel Award Scheme (ATAS). The scheme provides funding to performance level athletes from Shetland, Orkney, Western Isles and Highland, with an overall aim of supporting the cost of traveling to developmental opportunities and competitions.
With the badminton season starting in September, Jody was keen to see how she could use some of her ATAS funding to support her preparations, which meant Jody could travel to Denmark to take part in a high-performance camp “Denmark is such an up-and-coming country in the world of badminton at the moment, they’re doing really well. So, I was really interested in having a look at different camps there, and I came across a camp hosted by the former World Champion Thomas Laybourn and his team of staff. So, I looked at that and I thought that would be a great opportunity for me to go there, so I booked all the flights, which were kindly supported by the Athlete Travel Award Scheme.” She said.
This camp provided Jody with a week-long intensive training opportunity, where she would be put through her paces along with other up-and-coming players by several world class coaches.
After having done upwards of 10 hours of training per day, Jody has left Denmark with lots of learnings, she commented: “I had the chance to play against a former Indonesian professional singles player, who was just unreal, there was no shot he couldn’t play, his deception was through the roof, he was just a world class player, so to play against him was just great.”
“It was definitely a good confidence booster going into the season ahead, because the next season is technically an Island Games season, which is in the Faros, less than a year away now. So that was really good for me to do, and it has left me with loads of good new training ideas, and training plans.”
One of Jody’s favourite elements of playing sport in rural Scotland is the people she meets, trains with and competes with “The Orkney badminton community is a relatively small community, but we are really close-knit, and everyone gets on really well, we genuinely care about each other, and we want to see each other do the best we can, and I think that can be said for most of the sports in Orkney.” She said.
